Words
& Pictures: THE BARMAN
This was a taut yet relaxed opening to the Dark Surprise tour, in front
of a small but appreciative crowd in a converted movie theatre in western
Sydney. ‘Taut and relaxed’ sounds a contradiction in terms,
but bear with me…

There’s tension from a number of areas, not the least of which is
that the band has a new drummer in Nik Rieth and a bunch of new songs to
play. The first show of a tour always exposes frayed nerve endings anyway,
no matter how minimal. There’s not a player alive in any band that
won’t say it feels good to put Show Number One under the belt. I'd
bet the B irdmen are no different.

On the other hand for a group of guys slightly on edge, there’s no
shortage of relaxed onstage banter with audience members. Rob Younger is
especially animated and accepts beers, a homemade T-shirt and song requests
from the front row punters with patience, good humour and grace.

Let’s cut to what you really need to know.

The songs still mostly hit with the impact of a cosh on the back of the
head on a dark and cold night. It's a musical mugging, not a massage, and
the guitar interplay never bores.

New
drummer Nik Rieth (ex Celibate Rifles, New Chrtists and Tumbleweed, among
others) looks like he’s taken up residence in a health farm and spent
his musical hiatus middle-distance running with Dr Tek. It’s not as
if he doesn’t know the material, being a long-term Deniz Tek Group
member.) There’s one glaring fuck up on “New Race” (where
did that extra fill come from?) and a few rough edges, but we’ll take
that in our stride.

No disrespect to Ron Keeley whose behind-the-beat touch was such an essential
element of this band, but it’s a way different feel with Nik. In a
way, there’s probably a Keeley influence at work in that the new incumbent
rarely overplays his hand. The feels are more straight up. Where Ron was
deceptively fast with great hand speed, Nik's brutally hard-hitting at times.

And
the new songs? “What It’s For” will probably rates as
one of them for most people, although it was aired on the “Hit ‘em
Again” tour. It’s joined by three others. No names (I missed
out on a set list) but one’s a bone-crunching, full-tilt effort that
wouldn’t be out of place on “Radios Appear”, another a
monster truck of a tune that recalls some of the doom-laden mid-tempo stuff
by the “Lower Yourself” era New Christs. There’s a mass
of surf guitar laid thickly over another. Net effect is that they’re
killer songs that will only grow in stature with familiarity.

We get an hour-and-a-half, all originals and most of the faves figure. There
was a pre-gig hint that the stage volume might be loud but that doesn’t
translate to too great an exercise excess, come showtime. Deniz lays down
some heady tremolo and Klondike’s clean, lean lines are mostly in
nice relief in the mix. Great to hear Pip given due prominence too.

A
word on the venue: The Roxy’s a beautiful building, all ornate carved
ceilings and red curtains. The developers have left about 600 seats intact,
installing a dance floor for 150 or so where the orchestra pit might have
been. If it was in the US, they’d call it a ballroom. Its configuration
leaves an unfenced gap between the edge of the dance floor and the first
row of seats that, disconcertingly, would seem to present an occupational
health and safety issue for the visually-impaired or outright intoxicated.
Mind you, you might have problems becoming the latter, given that there’s
only one tiny upstairs bar that manages to run out of draught beer three-quarters
of the way into the show.

It’s a surreal setting in which to watch support Rocket Science because
most of the punters glue themselves to the seats for the support band’s
set. It’s good to see singer/keyboardist Roman Tucker and his theremin
back in action after his near-death experience in 2004. Guitarist Paul Maybury
(another accident-prone Rocket Scientist – he broke his leg at the
same as his singer knocked himself out) reveals he’s a local who saw
“Star Wars” as a kid in this very venue.

I can’t take you through the set in detail as I don’t know enough
of their back catalogue but, along with You Am I, this band peddles the
best-sounding bag of ‘60s derived garage skronk to get within a bull’s
roar of Australian commercial airwaves in many a year. The stand-out is
a jungle beat stomp that beat the crap out of me. I take more of a liking
to their songs that highlight the keyboards, but I like Monmoman and the
early Lyres too.

Newcastle is an unremarkable, mid-sized burgh, a couple of hours drive north
of Sydney. Defiantly blue collar in the wake of its re-positioning from
coal and steel town to tourism hotspot, you’ll do well to find any
evidence of urban renewal in or around the Cambridge Hotel, the venue for
tonight’s events.

The Cambridge is anything but a brass-and-polished-floorboards yuppie bar.
In shiort, it’s a shithole. Its clientele, however, is mostly OK and
as down-to-earth as the art-deco-gone-wrong paint scheme, or the handbill
advertising forthcoming shows by Mental as Anything (washed-up hitmakers
from the ‘80s, reduced to self parody) and “Australia’s
best AC/DC tribute band” (‘nuff said.)

The punters are here in large numbers tonight, about half of them wearing
Birdman shirts, streaming in on foot and by taxi, in many cases in spite
of the Sold Out sign. In fact, tickets for tonight’s show are still
being procured as Rocket Science fire up about 9pm. Strangely, that process
involves people lining up through the middle of the public bar.

After
an early perusal of the live music room, globetrotting Birdman fans Suree
(Cleveland, Ohio) and Jelly (London, England) and myself prefer to sit out
the support band’s set, sampling the culinary delights of the bistro
and doing some people watching over a few drinks. It’s going to be
hot and crowded enough later in the night. Best to preserve energy for the
main event. As it turns out, Suree’s vegetarian lasagne rebounds within
a few minutes, so maybe it was an ill-advised choice of fine dining. It’s
probably going to take more than a dodgy deep fried schnitzel to knock my
guts for six, but Jelly’s calamari rings look like tapeworms that’d
kill a black dog at 20 paces.

The locals (who, noticeably, don’t frequent the bistro) are out to
enjoy themselves. Not sure if the bucks’ party contingent made it
into the show (the ball and chain they had in tow might have cleared the
dance floor) but there’s a father-and-son combo, with Dad doing his
best to educate the next generation. It’s really a bit of a time warp
back to the early ‘80s, when live bands were de rigeur Friday night
fare. Nobody dresses up and the percentage of mullets as a per capita of
population seems slightly high.

The venue is known as The Glasshouse for good reason but the sound’s
remarkably OK, considering all those hard surfaces. Filling the room with
sweaty bodies was always going to make a difference. We move in as Rocket
Science winds down with 550 punters present by now. The room’s packed
but comfortably so, although if the glass doors hadn’t been opened
so people could spill into a concrete courtyard at side-of-stage, things
may have been different. It’s a big contrast to the last time Deniz,
Jim Dickson and Rob were here, with Deep Reduction. The personnel involved
must have been lost on the Novacastrians because that band failed to draw
(most people not making the Birdman connection.)

The
Radios appear about 10pm and churn out a similar set to the night before,
the order of the new songs being switched about. The reception for the opening
“What It’s For” doesn’t suffer through lack of familiarity
so that’s a good indication of what the tune’slike (ie. recognisably
Birdman.) Some of the unplayed newies are said to be a lot more eclectic,
but they’ll have to wait for another day. The band’s gait seems
a bit more measured this time out, new drummer Nik probably feeling a little
more at home.

Who said the pogo was no more as a contemporary dance? It’s certainly
alive and well in the form of the hapless idiot two rows back from the front
of the stage. His insistence that the only way to enjoy the show was to
hop up and down - entirely out of time and crushing the feet of anyone silly/unlucky
enough to be in his vicinity - was proof that there’s one fuckwit
in every crowd. If the pictures on this page are a bit blurry, you know
why. Plus, coming to grips with a borrowed camera (thanks Ashley Oz Rock,
but the weird light settings still suck.)

Crowd
surfing is still big in Newcastle, too though there’s one worrying
moment when the feet of one intrepid rider connect with a par 64 light can
mounted on a bar on the venue ceiling. There's also a surreal moment when
a punter persuades a bouncer, positioned in front of the crash barrier,
to hand Deniz a framed photo of himself. It's the sort of thing you think
could wait until after the show but the bouncer plants it within dangerously
short range of Dr Tek's effects pedals. A roadie spirits it away but the
bouncer spends most of the set applauding the faster songs. Gotta give him
points for possessing a good sense of musical appreciation, even if he comes
up short in the practicality stakes.

This time we get a slightly longer set, an Alice Cooper cover ("Caught
in a Dream" - I had to vertify its identity later by digging out my
copy of "Killer", which says more about my suitability as a potential
Name That Tune contestant than the way it was played) thrown in for good
measure in the second encore. “You’re Gonna Miss Me” is
restored to its fitting place right at the end, all soaring guitars and
simulated jug rhythms. Sublime.

It’s hot in more ways than one and even Professor Hoyle discards the
trademark tie.

Me, I’m driving home so I’m drinking water by night’s
end. It must be some sort of breaking of the spirit of responsible service
of alcohol laws, if not the letter, to only make tap H20 freely available
in seven ounce glasses. (I’m not a tightarse and prefer any becerage
in glass but it seems a travesty to pay a king’s ransom for the stuff
in plastic bottles.) Fuck stupid venue operators.

This is the show the Birdman tragics were looking forward to. Two warm-ups
outside the traditional inner-city haunts in the lead-up to this gathering
of the faithful at the best medium-to-large rock venue in this town.

OK, drink prices at The Metro are high but the sightlines are great and
the queues usually not too bad. Pity that so many people were of the opinion
that the sound mix sucked and onstage technical issues made it less than
clear sailing for the band.

It probably depended on where you were but consensus was that the vocals
were too low and the guitars either unbalanced or out of place. (Gotta say
the sound wasn’t as abysmal where I stood as it apparently was for
some others - but my hearing was a little dulled from the night before and
I was hooking into the beers.) The band’s usual mixer isn’t
on the program anymore and they’ve been working in a new crew. These
things take time. Might be easier if the stage volume was consistently balanced.

Which isn’t to say that the crowd didn’t lap it all up anyway.
Again, the new songs were prominent and very well-received. Two Coop covers
(one I can't recall and “Caught in a Dream”) took their place
in the encore, as did the almost obligatory take on “You’re
Gonna Miss Me”that may have wound up a tad early but still did the
job.

One seasoned follower reckoned “455SD” and “New Race”
had never been played more dynamically. The latter in particular elicited
the usual frenzied, fist-shaking response. And the more I hear the new tunes,
the more I like ‘em.
Nik’s drumming is markedly different to that of his predecessor -
more “rock”. He doesn’t spend half as much time on the
hi-hat or cymbals.

I’m
resolutely avoiding phrases like “better” as comparing drummers
of contrasting styles is just plain silly. It’s different - but if
having everyone based in the same country is more productive, then that’s
good. Let’s just acknowledge Ron’s contributions. Like Warwick
Gilbert on bass, he added something unique to this band.

Three shows down and three to go for this tour. I’m hardly objective
but Parramatta was energetic, if not up to some band members’ expectations
sonically, Newcastle spirited and loud, while the Metro was fiery with a
good atmosphere. With any luck we’ll be dialled in to reviews of the
other gigs, scheduled for northern New South Wales and Brisbane as the tour
winds up. If you want to let us know what they were like, mail here.

Before you ask, latest intel has the new album tentatively scheduled to
be recorded in April and out sometime after that. Now that’s
something else to look forward to.